The Runner
by HaleMcCkenna22
Summary: Jason has been running in one way or another since Alison disappearance, now he must stop and face her, and himself for the first time in Five Years


**I don't own Pretty Little Liars. This is a one shot inspired by Alison's return and Jason's reaction. Please read and review.**

"Our sibling's push buttons that cast us in roles we felt sure we had let go of long ago the baby, the peacekeeper, the caretaker, the avoider... It doesn't seem to matter how much time has elapsed or how far we've travel."- Jane Mersky Leder

Jason wouldn't call his "lost years" as his mother liked called them a mistake. Shore he ran from everything he knew squandering every privilege given to him, ended up after across the world, but he knew if he had never been driven been driven from Rosewood by the ghost of Alison he never would have found _himself_.

_A year after Alison went missing Jason found himself in a bar outside of Amsterdam ironically stone cold sober. He sat in a booth in the back of the empty bar nursing a club soda. His leggy waitress approached batting her eyelashes, any other day she would be just his type. _

_ "We're closing the kitchen soon can I get you anything?" She asked in slightly broken English._

_ "Do you have cake?" Jason asked in his broken Dutch._

_ "Cake?" She repeated back to him in English as though she thought she had miss heard him._

_ "Like Birthday cake," Jason said the word birthday sticking in his throat._

_ The waitress' eyes light up, "It's you birthday?" she asked eagerly._

_ Jason shook his head, "No my sisters."_

_ "She meeting you?" the waitress asked glancing around as though Alison was lurking around the corner._

_ "No she's dead."_

_ There was absolute silence the waitress blinked him in shock then turned suddenly and walked away. Jason could have hit himself he had scared away some waitress, and was now probably going to be kicked out by the huge bartender. Instead the waitress came back a few moments latter carried what looked like a bunt cake with a birthday candle sticking out of it. _

_ "Thank you," Jason said having the surprise out of his voice._

_ The waitress nodded her face grim half turning to leave then turning back around._

_ "What was her name?" the waitress asked softly._

_ Tears sprung to Jason's eyes for the first time in months, "Alison," Jason brethed._

_The waitress nodded._

(:)

Alison still sleeps on her side, she still smells slightly of sandalwood, she still walks with purpose, and she's still _alive_ despite four years of birthdays celebrated thinking she was dead.

"You haven't asked me anything about what happened," Ali says sitting the front porch of their childhood home as though no time as passed as though she hadn't been dead for four years.

"I thought you'd might need your space," Jason says.

Alison looks at him with that unflinching gaze of hers looking like she knew he was lying not only to her, but himself. The truth was he was too cowardly to say what he really should which was _I celebrated your birthday every year I missed you_. Instead he was aloof cold even, he might as well have been seventeen and stoned fighting and taunting his little sister. He wondered if their something in his screwed up D.N.A. made him incapable of saying what he really felt.

(:)

"You think what I kidnaped Alison?"

Spencer looks unapologetic smug even like she had finally figured out the mystery. That her unstable half-brother was the boogie man. Jason wondered how he could understand Spencer so well, and Alison had always been a mystery to him. Spencer wanted answers she wanted to win the game.

"Where were you? Were you in New York?" Spencer asks her eyes desperate.

"What dose New York have do with anything?" Jason asks feeling again as though he's missing a huge part of the story.

"Never mind." Spencer says rushing away.

Jason stands alone in his childhood home that now feels foreign wondering an unbearable thought was Alison afraid of him?

(:)

Jason wakes to the sound of piano keys in the early hours of the morning. Alison sits on the edge of the piano stool taping lightly at the keys her blond hair falling forward brushing the ivory keys. Jason stands in the doorway his breath taken away he imagined Alison like this grown up quietly doing the median things that had been stolen from her.

"Are you going to stand there all day, or are going to sit down?" Alison says still taping at the keys.

Jason slips next to her on bench their feet touching his fingers moving expertly across the keys.

"You always were better than me, "Alison said.

The comment was breezy, and offhanded, but it struck Jason right in jugular. His mother had made him spend hours playing the piano, he excelled the word "prodigy" was even thrown around. Jason's musical skills had earned him a place a Yale despite his poor grades, and substance abuse problems. Alison on the other hand had practiced very little she didn't need to beat Jason at this one thing she was already better at everything else.

"Not anymore I haven't played in years," Jason says.

"Me neither," Alison said softly.

Jason's heart clenched Alison had missed so much the whole part of growing up she'd never got to become the person who she would have been if she hadn't been snatched away. Now she was secretive and untrusting in a way she never had been before. Jason had hear her get up in the middle of the night gasping for air as though she was being be buried alive.

"There's always time," Jason said softly.

"Going to give me some lessons?" Alison asked her voice only half teasing.

"Shore," Jason said shrugging.

"I guess I should be flattered being taught be a Yale musician," Alison grumbled sounding like her old self.

Jason stares at her almost forgetting she didn't know.

"I never went to Yale," Jason says.

Alison looked surprised for the first time since she'd been home.

"Why not?" She said looking genuinely interested.

She'd stop playing pulling her knees up her chest as though he was telling her a bedtime story.

"I went to rehab instead it really not that interesting," Jason said feeling uncomfortable talking to Alison for that long like everything would blow up any moment.

Alison stated at him her face unreadable.

"What did Mom do?" Alison asked.

Alison had been persistent in questions about their mother since the funeral Jason thought she might be in some kind of shock.

"She hardly noticed she told everyone I was traveling in Europe," Jason said.

"That doesn't sound like her," Alison said frowning.

Jason thought that sounded exactly like their mother she was the queen of secrets, but didn't say that let Alison keep the happy memories of their mother.

Alison cocked her head the side, "What did you do after rehab?"

"Traveled," Jason said simply.

"Good," Alison said simply.

Jason frowned in confusion.

"You got out of Rosewood beside you would have hated Yale," Alison said smirking.

They sit in silence, on the piano bench both not shore with to say, but neither one wanting to leave.

(:)

Jason leaves for parts unknown on a Sunday a week after his mother is buried. Alison silently watches him pack from the steps he face blank.

"Come here," Jason says waving her over.

The old Alison never would have come when call, but this new secretive Alison dose.

"Here," Jason says holding out the small brown backpack that had sat untouched in the corner of his room since he had returned. Alison reached for the bag tentatively as though she thought it might break.

"What is it?" She asked.

Jason looked away, "Some birthday presents," he says softly.

Alison stood their holding the backpack blinking fiercely biting her lower lip. She suddenly reached forward wrapping her arms around her brother for the first time in five years.

**What did you think? This was requested by someone who liked my Jason Ali story Missing Ember, and after server case of writers block I thought I'd give it a try. I really wanted to show the struggle Jason had reconnecting with Ali when she returned, and some of his back story. I know the story doesn't have much of a flow, but I really wanted it to a combo of different experiences. **


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